The 2023 champion missed the first two events of this year’s Repco Supercars Championship and is still stuck at the bottom of the points table after racing in the next two.

However, he would have at least come close to escaping 25th position in the standings if not for an engine problem in Race 10 of the season at the Bosch Power Tools Perth SuperSprint.

Kostecki was running fifth when he pitted on Lap 20 and drove the #1 Chevrolet Camaro straight into the Erebus garage, where it remained for the duration.

Ryan, though, saw enough to suggest the West Australian is regaining the form which took him to the title last year.

“He was trying to get his head around what’s different with the car this year and he probably realised there’s not that much difference,” he said of Kostecki on Fox Sports.

“So, we’ve gone back to probably a baseline today [Race 10, Sunday] and it shows that we’ll just take off from here now and be good for the rest of the year.”

Kostecki missed pre-season testing although he did spend a day at Winton in his new-for-2024 chassis, and its new-for-2024 aerodynamic package, at Winton before racing at Taupo.

He finished only 22nd in the Saturday encounter in Perth when Erebus opted to sacrifice that race and save tyres for Sunday after he ended up off the road in a three-wide squeeze into the first corner.

Kostecki looked on to bank solid points in the weekend finale until trouble struck under the bonnet of Car #1.

“The engine decided to not play the game any more, so we just had to pull it in; it wasn’t going to fix itself,” explained Ryan.

“They’ve been really reliable but just, all of a sudden, got really hot, so head gasket or something internal.”

It was a similarly tough weekend on the other side of the garage for Jack Le Brocq, who left Wanneroo with finishes of 20th and 23rd.

He had a battery issue on the starting grid in Race 9 and was turned around by Nick Percat in Race 10.

Le Brocq sits 14th in the drivers’ championship while Kostecki is 129 points behind his fill-in and enduro co-driver, Todd Hazelwood, on the way to Hidden Valley next month.